Monday, January 15, 2007

Internet: China takes over

Yes, the usual suspects top Alexa's top three (though Alexa's owner Google stands at number 3 behind Yahoo and MSN) but the real surprise is where Chinese language websites rank.

A US Congressional hearing once "found" that the internet was of strategic importance to the US economy.

That's a lesson not lost in China - as the latest figures from Alexa.com demonstrate for of the top ten websites worldwide, three are Chinese sites with little or no English on them.

Even though the top ten is dominated by sites owned by or close to Google (see list below), baidu.com (no. 4), qq.com (9) and sina.com.cn are all Chinese owned (baidu.com is part owned by Google).

Microsft sites also score well (live.com is Microsoft's search site - but its results are not very good: its first site listed for "money laundering" is seemingly for a company that went out of business about two years ago and the website has not been updated since.

Outside the top ten, sitting amongst the likes of ebay, wikipedia and even Microsoft's corporate site are two more Chinese-only sites, bringing the total in the top twenty to a quarter of the list.

Take out Microsoft and Google's dominance and the only non-Chinese top ten site is yahoo.com. Despite the reputation of India as a tech-savvy country, no Indian site makes it to the top twenty, nor do any European - including British - sites. Indeed, the only non-US and non-Chinese site listed in the top 20 is Yahoo's Japanese site.